Selected In This Beautiful Lottery
by callmesandy
Summary: Peter and Olivia are snowed in, forced to share a bed, and neither is the cliche that pushes them into their first kiss. (Takes places before 2.01)


notes: no profit garnered, not mine. title from Bright Eyes's "Blue Angels Air Show." Thanks to pb for validation, all mistakes mine.

"This is ridiculous," Olivia said. "Are you sure you can't make the phones work?"

Peter looked at her like she was the one who was ridiculous. He was probably right. He said, "Both our phones were crushed by the rocks. You remember, the ones that fell from being pushed by the littlest Strong Man."

The man was 5'7" but Peter insisted on calling him short. She had stopped rolling her eyes at him. They were on day four of this manhunt.

Olivia said, "But you got the electricity working. There has to be a landline around here, right?"

"There is," Peter said. "I showed it to you. It was cut. By Mr. Meegar's comrade in experimentation."

"I really wish we knew his damn name. Can't you fix it?"

Peter sighed. "Not until morning, okay? When I will try."

They'd tracked another participant in Jacob Fisher's experiments to Gore Mountain in New York. Apparently this one had extraordinary strength. He also did something with pigs blood. Walter had theorized the man drank the blood and that was probably about some deficiency that gave the man odd cravings. "I theorize," Walter had said, "the strength he exhibits comes in bursts. Bursts he has no control over, much like that fellow we found with the pigeons. Whatever his name is. Was. Is? Is the poor fellow even still alive?"

They had gotten on this one's trail because he tried to use his bursts of strength to take apart an ATM. And then two more.

"I've never been snowed in before," Olivia said.

"Me neither, actually," Peter said. "But we've got heat and microwave dinners and 3 six packs of beer. I'm sure it will be better in the morning."

Olivia had found the cabin right on the edge of the state park. She thought that their target had been staying there. She wondered where he was staying in this blizzard. Probably another cabin, one with a phone.

She grabbed a beer and started drinking. "Someone will come looking for us."

"Yup," Peter said. He threw the beer can he'd just emptied into a trash can. The cabin had already been trashed but Peter was either trying to show off or didn't want to contribute to the mess. "Also, that generator should last for days. So we have heat, and the toilet and the shower work. And the microwave."

"And in the morning you'll try the phone line again," Olivia said.

"I promise." He burped and blushed. "Sorry."

"How many beers have you had?"

"Starting number 4," he said.

"So you're planning to drink an entire 6 pack," she said. She finished hers and started on her number 2. "It is pretty good beer."

"Tiny Hulk has good taste. Or whoever stocked this place." Peter was sitting on the double bed in the corner of the cabin. There was a kitchenette in the other corner and a mini-fridge. One couch. A radio so crushed even Peter couldn't rebuild it. Or so he'd said on their first pass. "I am going to microwave this Hungry Man's dinner, do you want one?"

"Sure," she said. She stopped pacing and sat down on the couch. It was like sitting on rocks. She got up and examined the cushions. "I found the money from the robberies. He put it in the cushions. And removed what was in here."

"You're saying the couch is impossible to sleep on," Peter said. The microwave beeped. He walked over to the floor where she was sitting and presented her with a steaming Hungry Man and a plastic fork. "I looked, no other utensils."

"Thanks anyway," Olivia said. She'd had worse meals. She bet Peter had, too. She finished another beer while she ate. Peter succeeded in drinking an entire six pack. As soon as he finished eating, he went into the bathroom.

She looked around for extra blankets. None.

Peter came out and said, "I'll take the floor. I've slept on worse. And I can use our coats as my blanket."

"That is also ridiculous. We're adults. We can share a bed." She thought this sounded like the beginning of a romance novel. Or the middle of one where the couple finally got together before they broke up because they couldn't talk like adults.

She kept on her jeans and t-shirt as she got under the covers. Peter had done the same. Their coats and sweaters and socks and boots were already laid out on the floor to dry.

She fell asleep before Peter, listening to him hum under his breath.

She woke up at 3 am with an urgent need to pee. She tried to be quiet but there were no lights in the cabin. She ended up swearing when she nearly tripped on Peter's coat. Peter said, "That's okay, I have to pee, too."

He didn't trip on anything. "What do you usually do when you wake up at 3 am, Agent Dunham?"

"Make coffee, get ready for the day," she said. "What do you do?"

"Tell Walter to stop whatever he was doing that woke me up," Peter said.

She actually fell back asleep.

She woke up curled on her side, her head against his back. It was nice, feeling his heartbeat, his warmth. She moved away and said, "Sorry."

"It's okay," Peter said. He got out of the bed. He went into the kitchen, she heard things banging. "Okay, bad news," he said. "There is nothing but beer to drink."

"I am not having that last six pack for breakfast," Olivia said. She rubbed her eyes.

"You can collect snow and boil it in the microwave," Peter said. He took one of the beers.

"You plan to be wasted all day?"

"Wasted on one beer? That's insulting," Peter said. "I have a phone line to get working."

He'd been working outside for an hour when Olivia heard thumping and grunting. She grabbed her gun and trained on the door as it creaked open.

It was their target. He had Peter over a shoulder and they were both covered in blood. There was so much blood. The man said, "I figured it out." He sounded gleeful. "Blood makes me strong. Blood on my skin. Isn't that awesome?" Blood on his face, blood on the floor from his path. Was it all Peter's?

"Put him down," Olivia said. "Stop right there."

"No," he said, smiling. "No, I'm doing great."

She shot him in the knee. He went down and Peter slid off his shoulder. All she could smell was blood. She kept her eyes on the target and didn't look at Peter. The target stood up. She shot him in the other knee. He got up again. She took a deep breath and on the exhale shot him four times in the forehead. He was still standing so she shot him in the chest and then the head again. He finally went down. She kept her gun trained on him as she checked Peter.

The horrible bloody man grabbed her hand, hard. She screamed and shot at him, aiming for his neck. Then Peter sprang up and beat the man with a length of pipe. Her hand was free and she was out of ammunition. Peter said, "I think he's totally dead now."

Then Peter fell down. She dragged him away from the body. She hoped it was a body now and no longer breathing. Peter looked awful. He had a cut on his neck and his head. Neither were deep or, she thought, dangerous, but both bled a lot. His hair was wet with blood and his face looked like a horror movie. She opened his jacket and saw the lower left side of his shirt was soaked with blood. She pulled up his shirt.

"Ow," he said. "Fuck. My jacket has a hole now. I love that jacket."

"You'll be okay," she said. She went back to the body and looked for a cell phone. She found one in his pocket. Luckily it hadn't been broken. She called Broyles. She rattled off her situation and needs.

She grabbed Peter's jacket and tried to apply pressure on both sides of the wound. She pulled Peter up on to her knee so she could apply pressure with one hand pressing down and Peter's own weight on her leg. She checked his pulse. She pushed her hair out of her face. She thought how would she tell Walter she'd let Peter die? What would she do?

His pulse got weaker. She was sitting in a puddle of blood. She heard herself repeating "Peter" over and over again.

It was 23 minutes before the paramedics finally came.

They got Peter on the gurney and took him away. She had to wait for the FBI. Someone had to take away the body and she had to explain things. It was another 10 minutes. The first FBI agent said, "Are you okay? You're covered in blood."

"It's not mine," she said. It was splatter and trying to stop Peter from dying. She had no idea if he was even still alive, she thought.

Finally she went to the hospital. A doctor said Peter was still alive, barely. A nurse took her to a locker room and pushed her into a shower. Olivia assumed she looked too horrifying for patients. She sat on a bench scrubbed clean, in a shitty white towel. Astrid came in and handed her clothes. "One of the FBI agents told me you'd probably need these."

Olivia smiled at her. She said, "How's Peter?"

"All they're saying is he lost a lot of blood. He was impaled by a pipe?"

"I think so," Olivia said. "Tiny Hulk apparently shoved into him and then just put it in his pocket."

She and Astrid sat next to Walter. Walter hummed and looked nervous. Then he jumped up and paced. Then he sat back down again.

Olivia called Charlie and listened to his updates. She didn't remember them five minutes later.

She somehow fell asleep. She woke up because Astrid rubbed her shoulder and said, "Olivia? They're saying Peter will be okay. The pipe managed to miss anything too essential."

"That's great," Olivia said. She sat up straight.

"Walter's with him now. He's still unconscious. Peter, I mean." Astrid smiled.

"Thanks for the clarification."

It was another six hours before she got to see Peter. He was barely conscious. "Hi," he said, for the third time.

"Hi," she said. She squeezed his hand for the third time.

Six days later she she helped him move his things into the Bishops' new hotel room. Peter said, "Did I finally get my own room because I nearly died?"

"Your need to recover helped," Olivia said. "You know who the real opposition was?"

"Walter, of course. We moved up two floors but it's a lot of change for him," Peter said. He laid down on the bed. "My very own bed. And a door I can close but never will."

"Really? Never," Olivia said.

"Walter will just break in when he really really needs me," Peter said. "I might try closing it. You're right. Don't rule anything out."

She laid down next to him. "I'm very glad you're alive," she said. "I was really scared."

He reached out and touched her face. "I scared you?"

"There was so much blood," she said, lightly. "It looked like a slaughterhouse. But I suppose you'd know better than me." His hand was surprisingly soft on her cheek.

"I worked at a meatpacking plant, not a slaughterhouse," he said.

She held his wrist. She felt his strong pulse through her fingertips. She said, "Are there still slaughterhouses? Is it all factories now?"

"Are you really interested in this?"

"No," she said. She closed the space between them and kissed him. He smelled so much better than he had at the cabin. It was a good first kiss, sweet. It's Peter, she thought, smiling.

He said, "Cause we were snowed in and you got to sleep next to me?"

"Oh, it's worse. I thought you were going to die. That's a bigger cliche."

"But I didn't," he said. He kissed her and it was nothing like sweet. It was dirty. She slid herself closer to him, wanting more.

"Though," he said. "I'm recovering from being impaled and very nearly exsanguinated and shouldn't go past first base, so we should stop."

"I can wait," she said.


End file.
